76 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
on the family to which it may be allied, by a consideration of the etymology 
of its name. The word Moa, whence is it derived? I confess, I know not 
any New Zealand word from which it may be supposed to have derived its 
origin. And this will seem the more remarkable when we consider that a 
very great number of New Zealand appellatives are not only derived and 
easily traceable, but are also generally highly expressive of some action or 
quality of the thing itself; chiefly, too, is this to be observed when such 
action or quality is peculiar or uncommon. But in the Moa, the most 
uncommon animal New Zealand has ever produced (especially in the esti- 
mation of a native), we have a cognomen which seems an entire exception 
to the common rule; for, as far as I understand it at present, it has, in 
reference to this immense animal, no meaning whatever. Further, it may 
not be amiss also to notice, en passant, that it is of rare occurrence in the 
language to find anything bearing so very short an appellation as the bird 
in question. In the Friendly, Society, and Sandwich groups, the term 
** Moa” has been, I believe, invariably given by the natives of those islands 
to the domestic cock, and used as the proper name for that animal by the 
missionaries there. The New Zealander, in relating his fabulous account of 
the Moa, almost invariably said it was like a “ tikaokao,” i.e., a cock (they 
having given the cock that name from its crow, which to them sounded 
like those letters when drawn out and pronounced after their manner), and 
that it was adorned with wattles, ete. Without, at all, at present, entering 
into the question as to what country or countries the existing race of New 
Zealanders emigrated from to these islands, the popular belief that at 
least a portion of them is of Malay origin, is, I think, in connection with 
the name of this bird, worthy of notice; for whilst we know the term 
* Moa” is used to denote the cock in the Friendly Islands and other 
groups, it is only in the isles of the Indian Archipelago that the cassowary 
(Casuarius casoar, Briss.) is to be found; and this bird, too, is ** heavy 
and stoutly built,” and the only one of the whole family of Struthionide 
possessing wattles; for, according to Cuvier, it “has the skin of its head 
and top of the neck naked, of an azure-blue and fiery-red colour, with 
pendent caruncles like those of the turkey, and is the largest of all birds 
next to the ostrich.”* May we not, I would ask, be allowed to conjecture, 
that in that now long-past period, when the forefathers of the present race 
of aborigines first landed on these shores, a few of those New Zealand birds 
might still be found in the most secluded and mountainous retreats, having 
hitherto escaped the repeated inroads of the original inhabitants; or, we 
may suppose that the bones only were seen, and identified to belong to a 
bird by those new-comers, to which, from their real or supposed resem- 
* Vide Cuvier * R2gne Animal," Class Aves, Gen. Casuarius, 
